But there is still no men's swimming and diving team, much to the disappointment of Ron Neugent, an alum who filed a Title IX complaint in 2009 stating that male student-athletes were underrepresented based on the percentages of male and female undergraduates at the school.
Neugent argued that men were being discriminated against because they had proportionally fewer opportunities in athletics.
His goal was to get the university to add sports for men. But the university--agreeing that it would work on the situation but not admitting non-compliance--opted to achieve proportionality by looking more closely at team rosters and adding and subtracting roster spots.
And having done so, administrators recently filed paperwork stating that the school was in compliance.
Neugent, though, wanted Kansas to add, as mentioned, men's swimming and diving as well as men's tennis. But that seems like a lot of roster spots and KU was not grossly out of proportion. In 2007, two years before the complaint was filed, the university was told it had achieved substantial proportionality when it had a 1.8 percent gap. It seems that adding two men's teams would have required the addition of at least one women's team, which is always great--but expensive.
It also seems that Neugent was concerned not just with equity, but with his alma mater's position in a competition called the Director's Cup. The competition rewards a school for its success across 10 different men's and women's sports. Adding those two men's sports would help KU's standing in that competition.
But, as of now, KU has opted to closely monitor the numbers.
